


Elegy

by Lafayette1777



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), SPECTRE (2015)
Genre: 009 is still pissed, Bond is dramatic, Bond is mysterious, I had fun, I still can't believe cat owner Q is canon now, M/M, Post-SPECTRE, Q's cats are Leibniz and Newton, SPECTRE fucks shit up, Smoking!Q, Sort of a fix-it, absurdity, amateur existentialism, and Q pretends to be unimpressed, at this point no one's even surprised by crisis, but mostly just a logical progression, drinking and pining, my new favorite tag, numb acceptance, squad goals, this is shitty but whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-01 18:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5216714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>In which Bond returns, but only in increments.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It starts small. 

He receives a package. Specifically, a repurposed Amazon parcel with the old address scribbled over to write in the number of Q’s flat. It’s an oblong box, larger than it needs to be; Q shakes it and the rattle suggests that the object is small and not in the vein of any regular geometric shape. There is no return address. He has it scanned, despite a growing intuition concerning what is inside. So when he finally slides a kitchen shearing knife down the middle crease of the cardboard lid, what he finds doesn’t surprise him at all. 

The severed brake pedal of a familiar 1964 Aston Martin. 

The sabotage is intentional, it would appear, which makes Q scowl when he remembers the hours he put into rebuilding that bloody car. Cryptic, ungrateful bastard. Still, though, the acrimony subsides, because the message is clear. When he exchanges looks with Moneypenny, Tanner, and Mallory, their mirrored expressions confirm his theory. 

Bond has his foot on the gas again. 

Which is more than can be said for the rest of MI6 - the post crisis reshuffling is a clusterfuck comparable to the one after the incident at Skyfall. And, again, Q gets himself tangled in it. His orders are conflicting; Tuesday he’s told to delete all double-O files and by Wednesday they’ve reinstated the program completely. By Thursday they’re running missions again. Tomorrow, he suspects, there will be some sort of international incident and all of it will be up in the air once again. 

007 remains absent, his dubious resignation note of a few weeks ago still going unread on M’s desk. Q goes to great lengths not to think about it, but the brake pedal that now sits at the edge of his desk next to a snub nose Walther has a tendency to steal his concentration. Skyfall, again, rises in his mind like a growing flame - it was at this point in the chaos of the aftermath, then, that he and Bond had begun their intangible, half-linked little dance, only to leave it unresolved. 

Now, it seems he's missed his chance, even if the pedal tries to persuade him otherwise. 

It’s calling to him from the deepest pocket of his winter coat when he comes into work on Tuesday, dreading whatever committee will call him up today. Mallory seems considerably less enthused about civilian oversight now that it’s got a knife at his throat. Tanner’s lost a stone just from the stress of the last three weeks and every time Q’s laid eyes on Eve, she’s been up to her eyeballs in phone calls and emails and everything she could’ve avoided if she stayed in the field. They’ve all taken to telling each other to _fuck off and have a nap_ whenever they pass in the halls, but it’s always with a wry smirk and remnant of the adrenaline rush that sometimes doesn’t feel as if it’s worn off yet. 

In Q-Branch, there’s a letter on his desk. 

No return address. But he knows the handwriting - the looping g’s had been a source of over-the-comms banter for weeks. Q smirks a little, and instinctually surveys the rest of the room. He pokes his head out and asks Julian if anyone had been in before him. The answer is a no, and Q isn’t shocked in the slightest. He returns to the envelope and slips a finger beneath the edge, drawing the slightest of line of blood when he goes at it a little too enthusiastically. 

Inside, there are instructions. 

How Bond knows any of this, he can’t fathom - but it confirms that 007 has been anything but stagnant in his time away. Q quickly switches to a less valuable laptop and makes sure the necessary proxy servers are still in place. His anonymity assured, he dives in; the address the instructions lead him to is beneath even the usual hub of deep web espionage. It’s slow work to get below the illegal trade and the faux government intelligence. He’s dipped into the deep web many times, sometimes for work and sometimes out of boredom. The lawman part of him is made twitchy by it, because there’s nothing he can do when presented with the sorts of things he’s meant to prevent. He’d tried, once, and had been presented with the kind of look from his superiors that suggested they knew exactly what he was talking about and had already decided not to do a thing about it. 

When he arrives where Bond intends him to, he’s presented with what appears to be the transcript of a previous chatroom conversation, wherein every message had been written in a particularly impenetrable-looking code. Still, there’s something about it that immediately sets off alarms in Q; it practically screams SPECTRE activity, or at least Quantum. He saves the page and wonders if the combined minds of himself, Moneypenny, Tanner, and Mallory will be able to unravel it, because Bond’s left no hints. The letter is blank, save the chatroom address. Defiantly terse. That is, until Q flips it over and catches the black ink on the back. 

_For you._

Q smirks a little at that, because it seems far more likely that this particular tidbit Bond has left him is entirely self-serving. Bond has torn off on one of his periodic vendettas and, as per usual, Q is his pathetic and willing accomplice. He smirks, but it’s only because his devotion is utterly pitiful, and Bond knows it. 

 

 

“Well, someone has to state the obvious,” Moneypenny says, inspecting the print out that still awaits decoding. “They’re coming for Blofeld.”

M’s face shows its usual mild concern when confronted with catastrophe. He murmurs, “That’s clearly what Bond suspects.”

Tanner is perched on the edge of Q’s desk, lips set in a hard line. “If they manage to get Blofeld out of Belmarsh, we should hire them. Because that would be bloody amazing. There’s no one higher priority than him.”

Mallory frowns further. “Any luck with decoding it, Q?”

“I’ve got four people on it, including myself, and we still haven’t developed a key,” Q laments. “But I am inclined to trust 007’s judgement on this.” Over the last few days, he’s been contemplating whether Bond even knows what the decoded conversation says, or if he, too, is functioning on suspicion alone. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

“He _does_ have an unfortunate tendency to be right,” Moneypenny concedes. “Despite the body count he wracks up to prove it.”

At this, Q wonders (not for the first time) of what has become of Dr. Swann. Bond does have a track history of forging bonds while under the influence of alcohol, adrenaline, and traumatic brain injuries. And some of his more sociopathic tendencies usually cement the feeling as mutual amongst the men and women unfortunate enough to end up in the crossfire. Inevitably, they end up dead or disenchanted; if Bond is on the move again, then one of the two has happened, and Q hopes for Madeleine’s sake that it’s the latter. 

“Well, this isn’t much to go on.” M has turned his gaze back on Q. “Until it’s decoded there’s very little information I can pass on to anyone who might be useful.”

The strictly logical part of Q is aware that it’s a little nonsensical that they all trust Bond’s risk assessment so implicitly. But this is what he does, or at least what he does to them; they follow him to the ends of the Earth, but he just keeps running. He’s a fundamental theorem, Q muses. The doing and the undoing of all of them. 

“I’ll keep working at it,” Q promises, perfectly conscious of the fact that they are the puppets and Bond holds the strings.

 

 

They’ve never shared a bed, or even a kiss, and yet the pillow beside him seems colder than ever. Before long a solidly built tabby cat meanders up to claim it, settling in to gaze at Q with a pair of languid tawny eyes and an expression somewhere between adoration and indifference. 

Against his better judgement, he’s taken to carrying around both the brake pedal and Bond’s note with him at all times. Now, the objects stare at him from the bedside table, the words _for you_ standing dark against the glow of a streetlamp outside. He should be asleep, but that’s never been his strong suit. And Bond knew it, too. He’d always had a knack for arriving in Q-Branch with a cup of tea and a flirtatious smirk just when the circles were darkest beneath Q’s eyes, just when the resulting smile seemed most difficult and most necessary. 

Now, though, his absence is the root of all evil. Q shouldn’t feel as betrayed as he does, but he’s awake and it’s three in the morning and the feeling is natural. Liebniz, the cat, head butts Q’s outstretched hand affectionately. Newton’s whiskers brush against his toes where they stick out the edge of the duvet. Bond never specified whether he likes cats or not, but Q suspects he does. There’s always been something a little feline about him. 

 

 

He’s slipping into his anorak when he sees it. It’s a postcard from Singapore, folded three or four times into a neat square still thin enough to have been slipped under his door. Q hasn’t slept much; he wonders idly if he was awake when it was delivered, but was too far from the door to notice. Bond is very close indeed. 

He unfolds it smoothly.

_Stay safe. Soon._

Q frowns at Bond’s tendency toward ambiguity. It seems unnecessary but, then again, the same could be argued for 007’s tuxedos and vodka martinis. And Bond is a creature of habit, after all. Sex and death and rebelling authority and, over everything else, Queen and Country. He’s a ghost, doomed to repeat old patterns ad infinitum. A specter.

He adds the postcard to the pocket with the other one and the pedal, all of it weighing him down with every step. 

 

 

Eve arrives in his office by noon, not on any official business. She usually appears at some point to say hello, or bitch about her boyfriend, or listen attentively to whatever Q’s latest bitch-worthy misfortune is. Today, though, she comes bearing a rainbow cake pop and a smirk. 

“It’s 009’s birthday,” she explains, clearing away a few prototype grenades in order to perch on the edge of his desk. 

“Is she still mad about--”

“Yes.” Eve snorts, and motions to the cake pop. “I only managed to smuggle that out by telling her it was for Mallory.”

“It’s hardly my fault that everything wilts beneath Bond’s touch,” he says, but it’s not as lighthearted as he wants it to be. The champagne he’d left in place of the DB10, though, _was_ lovely. Q had wondered at the time if Bond had intended for them to share it. “Speaking of which, something happened this morning.”

Moneypenny’s eyebrows raise. There’s something in the twitch of her left hand toward an imaginary sidearm that reminds Q that she’s more similar to Bond than anyone will acknowledge. “Nothing major,” he says quickly. “Just this.”

He hands over the postcard. By the motion of her eyes, she reads it over several times before she hands it back, despite its brevity. “Well, you _are_ his favorite.” She smirks again, returning the creased card. 

“What gives you that impression?”

“Don’t be daft,” she retorts, and then laughs with her head thrown back and her curls bobbing. He’s struck, then, by the surreality of it all - C is dead, it’s 009’s birthday, Eve is laughing. And Bond is coming home.

 

 

One piece. 

On an autumn Tuesday, Belmarsh prison burns to the ground for reasons unknown. Some inmates escape, some don’t. To no one’s surprise, Blofeld is unaccounted for. There is no trace of him, but they’ve seen this act before. Q had never managed to fully decode the deep web intelligence from Bond, which is embarrassing, but somehow he doubts it would have made any difference in the long run. Inevitability steps in all too often. 

Q arrives on scene to find only the husk of the major cell block, the air still thick with ash and dust. Moneypenny and M are already there; Tanner is on his way. Together, they join the search effort, and wander through the ruins. Q half expects Bond himself to rise from the gray haze. 

As it happens, he does. 

A week later, Q is locking the door to his office with one hand and checking his phone for the time with the other. It’s after midnight; he spares a glance and a wave at the oasis of light to his left that is the night shift in Q-Branch, guiding any Double-Os still in the field. Q will be on call all night, of course, but his flat has been deemed secure enough in times of crisis. 

Crisis. He supposes that’s what they’re in now, even if it hardly feels like it. Blofeld’s at large - theoretically, SPECTRE is mobilizing again. And yet it still feels like 009’s birthday, like the squint of Eve’s eyes when she laughs. He can’t muster any panic. 

( _What’s to be done?_ he’d asked, the day after they’d officially deemed Blofeld escaped. The question wasn’t new. It had always been there. Except once upon a time there seemed to be answer. _Lead Silva to Skyfall_ or _Make me disappear_ or _I need one more favor._ )

He adjusts the brake pedal in his jacket pocket. 

It’s after midnight, and outside a mist dampens the shoulders of his coat and the ends of his hair. Visibility is low, or at least that’s what he tells himself after the fact to calm the discomfort at his own obliviousness. Regardless, he’s already thinking about a shower and warm sheets and Leibniz and Newton by the time a familiar shape steps from the shadows around the door to his building. 

And, for a moment, it feels a little like time stops. 

“Well, it’s about bloody time,” Q says, to keep himself from doing something rash. The urge to kiss Bond is unexpectedly strong; he balls a fist and sucks in a breath until it passes. 

Bond smirks. “Missed me, did you?”

Q just snorts, unlocking the door. Bond follows him in without an invitation, and watches as Q presses the button for the lift. “We need you,” he says quietly, pushing at his glasses. “As per usual.”

“I knew you would,” Bond replies, but it’s not smug. Q barely has time to register the strange tone of his voice before there’s movement - Bond’s leaning over and kissing Q on the edge of his mouth. Gently, as if it’s what they’ve always done. As if tenderness beyond a few longing looks and complimentary cups of tea is something to be expected.

“Bond.” It’s not a question, or a warning. The lift doors slide open, but neither of them breaks eye contact. 

“So, Blofeld’s escaped, then,” Bond says casually, stepping into the elevator. 

“Yes.” Q follows him, words and steps uneven. “I... _we_ need you,” he repeats, feeling dull and off-kilter. Bond just smiles that smile of his that usually doesn’t reach past his mouth, but today Q thinks he might see something of it penetrate the blue above. “Are you ready to get back to work, 007?”

Bond reaches for his hand, intertwines their fingers with a sigh. This is not their usual dance; unfamiliarity washes over him, but he doesn’t choke. Q can’t help but think that Bond has not returned in one piece, but that maybe the piece that made it back is a starting point. The beginning of a dance for two. 

They meet eyes just as the doors ping open. “With pleasure, Q.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to continue, as I've gotten a few little bits of inspiration over the last week or so. Thanks for all the support!

Q isn’t really sure what to do, so he decides to drink.

And contrary to popular belief, he’s actually quite good at it - though he’s certainly nowhere near Bond’s level of imperturbability, he’s no lightweight, so when he pulls vodka out of his kitchen cabinet it’s potent enough to have the agent raising an impressed eyebrow. Two shots are poured, and then Bond seats himself on Q’s settee without asking.

“Welcome home,” Q toasts, lifting his glass just as Leibniz climbs casually into Bond’s lap. 

Bond’s eyes dart around Q’s flat for the shortest of seconds, as though evaluating whether this really is _home_. He shrugs, almost imperceptibly, then throws back the shot as though it were water, all the while scratching under Leibniz’s chin. “Thank you, Q.”

Q doesn’t know what to do about the kiss downstairs, so he decides to ignore it, moving instead to refill their glasses with one hand and text Moneypenny with the other. Bond doesn’t bother to ask what he’s doing, but contemplates the cat in his lap. “You said there were two, yes?”

Q raises an eyebrow at him. “Newton’s not as sociable.”

“Shame,” Bond replies, directing a fond, if distant, smile at Leibniz. 

“Remarkable, what you did a few months ago,” Q says, collecting their glasses. Something derisive sneaks into his tone when he adds, “You shot down a helicopter with a handgun.”

Bond just blinks. “I do what I want.”

“Clearly,” Q mutters, and if it comes out a little bitter, he won’t admit it. It takes enormous willpower not to ask about Dr. Swann, but there’s something about Bond that seems a little unkempt - aesthetically, he’s as immaculate as ever, but there’s a hesitation in the motion of his limbs and the blink of his eyes. As though he’s trying too hard to not be strange at all. 

“We should go,” Q declares, before Bond fills the silence with something charming that will leave Q forced to swallow back a smile. He glances at his mobile. “The team is waiting.”

“The team?” Bond asks, moving stiffly to his feet after gently removing Leibniz from his lap. 

Maybe it’s the liquor, but Q stops at the door smirks back at him. “Your bloody fan club.”

 

 

Moneypenny’s not wearing heels, which is unusual in and of itself; the death glare she sends Bond confirms that he’s called her into work from what was meant to be a relaxing evening. Mallory doesn’t look as though he’s left the office in a week, and Tanner’s far too professional to lean one way or the other. 

And Bond, of course, just lifts the corner of his mouth in something resembling a greeting. 

“Nice of you to show up,” M mutters. “Bit late, though, isn’t it?”

“ _I’m_ not the one who let Blofeld escape, even with advanced warning,” Bond retorts. 

At this, Q can’t stay silent. “Then why didn’t you come back and secure him yourself? If we’re too incompetent to crack your cryptic little messages.”

The mirth drains from Bond’s eyes so fast Q wants to take a step back. But, if there’s anything he’s learned from working with double-Os, it’s never to show them reluctance of any sort. “I was busy,” Bond says quietly, and somehow he manages to sever the subject right there. 

“So, are you fit for duty, 007?” Moneypenny sneers.

“You can ground me if you like but you know that’s never worked in the past,” Bond quips back. 

“You’ll have to go through the physical again,” M sighs, nonplussed. “Hopefully it’ll go better than the last time you decided to disappear.”

Bond looks as though he might roll his eyes, if it weren’t so much effort. 

“You’re lucky,” Mallory continues, shifting through a pile of manilla envelopes on his desk. “Not only are we all still employed--”

“Though obviously you couldn’t be arsed to care about _that_ ,” Moneypenny cuts in, not quite friendly. 

Mallory sends her a glance that she ignores. “But the double-O program still exists and your number hasn’t been reassigned. Can’t imagine why.” He picks up the phone insouciantly without looking up. “You have a pattern, 007.”

He doesn’t say anything else, but the message hangs in the air. 

_We knew you’d be back._

Q’s glad that they’re not the only ones who are a bit pathetic. 

“Report to Medical at seven hundred hours,” Tanner says finally, rubbing tiredly at one eye. Bond nods rigidly, but the air in the room has grown so close that Q is already heading for the door before he sees it. He half expects Bond to follow him, but by the time he’s on the tube he knows better. He shouldn’t feel so betrayed; about any of it, really. Bond, indeed, does what he wants. 

 

 

He spends the night hacking NATO for recreational purposes and listening to Leonard Cohen so loud he’s sure the neighbors will bitch him out personally by sunrise. They don’t, but Newton knocks over a glass around six and shatters Q’s groove - suddenly he can’t focus on the music or the code in front of him, and eventually he finds himself on the balcony, smoking for no reason whatsoever. 

The street below is cold and blue but just behind the apartments in front of him an orange glow is beginning to permeate. He ignores it in favor of calculating where the best sniper positions would be on the building opposite. Since Blofeld’s been loose, he’s started wearing his shoulder holster again - and not just because it makes him think of Bond. It’s not an action inspired by panic, but rather a numb acceptance. He’d thought that after Skyfall things would calm down for good, that routines would develop and simplicity would manifest itself. He knows, now, that crisis constant, and ultimately meaningless. They will clean every flat surface only to see it dirtied again. 

How Bond manages to both kill and confront death for such futile purposes and still stay upright, Q can’t fathom. 

Q lets the cigarette whittle down until it nearly burns the delicate skin between his fingers. He acknowledges, with something like smugness, that self destruction doesn’t always have to be limited to double-Os. 

 

 

By noon he goes into work and gets so caught up in a welding project that he ignores his mobile. It’s uncharacteristic of him to lose the big picture, but perhaps it’s because every action he’s taken lately has started to feel like a microcosm of something larger. Moneypenny eventually finds his silence worrisome enough that she makes it down to Q-Branch to tap him on the shoulder, and nearly gets herself torched for her trouble. 

After Q has pulled up his mask and apologized profusely for solid five minutes, she finally delivers the message she’d intended. “Bond’s just passed his physical.”

Q raises an eyebrow, stripping off his heavy gloves. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Well, he did show up at _your_ flat first,” she replies, and then eyes him shrewdly. “Did anything--”

“I poured him a drink and then he attempted to woo my cats.” He turns his gaze on his desk in order to hide any hesitation that might give himself away. It’s not quite a lie, but it certainly feels as though it’s edging close to one. 

“Not Newton, surely.”

“No, Leibniz.” He looks up and smiles at her fondly. “Newton isn’t quite so cheap.”

She sits down heavily in a stray rolling chair, head lolling back. “Bond keeps bringing you up in conversation, you know. Even when it’s hardly necessary.”

“He’s probably just getting eager to see what toys I’ve made him in his absence,” Q retorts. “Not that he has any respect for them.”

There’s nothing convincing about his tone, though, and Eve sends him a smile that’s almost pitying. 

After she’s gone, he ends up working on the biometrics in a handgun that he suspects will end being relinquished to Bond. And, against his will, he’s reminded of that first Walther the agent had lost under his command - into the stomach of a komodo dragon, as it were. He’d thought it was bald-faced lie when he’d first read the report on it. Entirely too ridiculous to be true. But in the years since, that particular instance has facilitated his belief that Bond must be something of an absurd hero, to be able to look upon both the ludicrous nature of his work as well the void of death and destruction he leaves in his wake and greet both with only a halfway amused smirk. Every near death experience, every villain removed from power only to be replaced - all of it inevitably meaningless, and yet Bond isn’t deterred. There’s something in that that Q admires, even if he’s not sure he wants to replicate it in himself. 

Time breaks down. The work is slow but then suddenly it’s midnight, and Julian is telling him gently that he’ll take care of 008 in Burkina Faso until tomorrow. Q nods, and doesn’t thank him as he should, before wandering outside toward the underground. He contemplates, on the tube, whether the combination of the brake pedal in his pocket and the sidearm under his coat makes him look lumpy. 

 

 

Two days later, and he’s meandering toward M’s office with an armload of approved budget figures. His eyes dart up from the floor when he hears a familiar rumbling voice and Moneypenny’s crisp reply. 

“I see you’ve gotten better at dodging your psych evaluation,” Eve is murmuring, and then there’s the flip of paper and a snort. “Only substance abuse and unresolved childhood trauma this go around.”

“What can I say,” is the, undoubtedly smirking, reply. “My resurrection skills are improving.”

“It is absolutely fucking absurd that they cleared for you duty in three days,” Q says, entering abruptly and letting the files drop heavily from his arms onto Moneypenny’s desk. 

“Don’t hold back.” Moneypenny gives a sardonic snort, as she usually does when confronted with his lack of filter. “Tell us how you really feel, Q.”

Bond just raises an eyebrow. “I assure you I am more than fit for service, Quartermaster.”

Q just huffs, and turns back to Eve imploringly. She, immediately, becomes keenly interested in the budgets he’s just handed in. He looks back at Bond, who smiles nonsensically at him, and feels bitterness rise in his throat. 

“Unbelievable,” Q murmurs, without the vehemence he intends. He turns on his heel and disappears back to the darkness and artificial light of the basement. 

 

 

Most of his torso is beneath the engine block of an Aston when he feels the tug on his pant leg. He rolls out from under the car rather inelegantly, but that doesn’t dissuade the sick satisfaction of watching 007 grimace slightly as he straightens. Old dog, indeed. 

“Can I do something for you?” Q asks flippantly, getting to his feet and wiping the grease from his hands onto a nearby rag. 

“Tanner said he sent you mission parameters already,” Bond replies smoothly, and Q tries not to let his eyes linger on the bob of his Adam’s apple. 

Q, wordlessly, begins to make his way towards his office. Bond follows him in without asking, of course, and proceeds to hover while Q brings up his work email and finds Tanner’s latest directions. There’s a suspected regrouping of SPECTRE forces in Tallinn that’s raising everyone’s hackles, but no one’s had eyes on Blofeld yet. A number of double-Os are being deployed over the next few days with orders not to engage, but Q has the strangest feeling that somehow that’s not going to work out. Again, he feels that same strange disconnect that had begun just after Blofeld escaped - an inability to feel at all panicked by what is surely going to culminate as a major catastrophe in the near future.

Bond’s gaze prickles on the back of his neck but he refuses to let it ruffle him anymore than it ever has. 

He spends a moment digging around for the correctly calibrated handgun, and then another long stretch of seconds passes before he sets eyes on one of the new blast proof radios, reinforced especially for 007. He places both into Bond’s open palms but is met only with an expectant leer. 

“That’s it, then?” Bond asks. “Nothing that explodes?”

“I gave our last pyrotechnics to 009,” Q sighs. “It’s taken me months to win back her favor, you realize.”

“Subira certainly can hold a grudge.”

Q looks up, then, to find Bond smiling at him in a way that’s almost sincere. It lacks the usual absurd edge that shrouds all of Bond’s features and mannerisms; as it happens, there even seems to be something like apology coagulating behind his light eyes. The thought of Bond being even remotely repentant is absurd in and of itself, but he’s never been one to ignore empirical evidence. 

Bond begins to leave - quietly, his brogues making only the slightest tap against the concrete. Q feels himself move.

“Bond,” he says, barely audible. Still, the agent turns, as though he was waiting for Q’s call. There’s only a split second of hesitation before they’re meeting halfway, letting it boil over into a fervent, earnest kiss. Bond slips an arm around his waist just as Q’s hand brushes against the straining tendons of the agent’s neck. For a moment, everything is wild and hot and impossibly quick, and then they’re both pulling away to breathe. 

“Well, go on, then,” Q gasps, nodding toward the door. He’s still halfway wrapped around Bond, but he manages to break free one hand to pat 007 neatly on the chest in dismissal. “There’s work to be done.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the bit of a wait on this one, I got into writing a one-shot last week called _The Same Earth_ that some of you may be interested in :)

He steps into his flat with the intention of losing himself and his evening in a few hundred thousand lines of base code for a new server project. He is not so lucky. 

“I hate eating alone,” Bond says innocently, as though that should earn him a pardon. 

It almost does. 

Q tosses his backpack and coat into a pile next to the door and crosses to the sink nonchalantly. He’s not inordinately surprised to find that Bond has broken in and made himself dinner, and certainly doesn’t have the energy to be offended. The world has tilted on its axis enough in the last few weeks that he’s beyond any sort of normal reaction. 

“How was Estonia, then?” Q asks, even though he already knows. He feels Bond’s eyes on his back as he reaches for a mug and puts the kettle on in one smooth movement. 

“Uneventful,” Bond confirms. From what Q had heard over the comms, all they’d managed to do was shut down one of SPECTRE’s satellite operations - something human trafficking-related, nothing they haven’t seen before. Bond, surely, was disappointed by the lack of explosions and ultimatums. Blofeld had been nowhere to be seen. 

Something about the anticlimax of it has left Q exhausted. 

He plops into the chair across from Bond at the breakfast bar style counter, watching with blank, tired eyes as the agent picks at a few eggs scrambled over cold toast. The silence is comfortable, and welcome. Q fields so many questions and dishes out so many orders in the space of a day that sometimes he can hardly bring himself to greet Leibniz at the door when he comes in. Bond, a man of few words when not in the throes of professional manipulation, seems to understand that. 

“So, what now?” Bond murmurs, once he’s scraped the last egg remnant off of one of Q’s mother’s favorite medieval castle-patterned plates. 

Q looks up from where his head has begun to dip somnolently toward his tea mug. “Fuck me, I dunno.”

Bond heaves himself to his feet, pulling his spent plate with him. “Maybe later,” he rumbles, heading for the sink. 

Q frowns. “What?”

Bond’s voice is very, very close to his ear when he replies, “You said ‘fuck me.’”

Q snorts out a laugh, hiding the blush in his cheeks as by resting his head on the countertop. He feels Bond’s hand brush over his shoulder blades as they shake with mirth. 

“That was awful,” Q finally gasps, the laughter subsiding. “Does that work on people?”

“I save my best for you.”

“Christ, I certainly hope not.” Q slithers off the chair and into a standing position, shuffling back toward the door in order to retrieve his laptop from his bag. As he slides his coat out of the way, he feels a familiar weight in right side pocket - a moment later, he’s pulling the Aston brake pedal out, along with the postcard and the notes. 

“These are yours, I believe,” he murmurs, piling them into Bond’s hands as if they were a Walther and a radio.

“You kept them with you?” Bond asks, and though Q expects mockery, when he looks up there’s only something like awe in the agent’s eyes. 

“Of course,” Q says, trying for dismissiveness. “You clearly thought you were being very clever with the symbolism.”

Bond, though, doesn’t show even the remotest semblance of shame, and Q eventually caves into a smile. “It was a good reminder,” Q murmurs, self consciously pouring his cold tea down the sink. “That you were still out there.”

He sends another glance Bond’s way and finds the agent pondering the floor. Q wonders if he’s hit a nerve - Bond’s time away and his inevitable return seems to be a subject of some delicacy. But Q is not delicate, and neither is Bond. He tells himself that if he were any less exhausted, Q would pry and jab until he understood exactly where Bond had fallen through the cracks and let Dr. Swann and his chance at freedom slip away. 

As it is though, he lets Bond kiss him, and then fall into bed beside him, and nothing whatsoever is solved. 

 

 

By noon the next day he’s in a meeting with all the other section heads while the head of some parliamentary committee mumbles on about Six’s general incompetence. Q has always been somewhat fascinated by people of the sort who want to speak but clearly don’t want to be heard. Maybe it’s simply a reaction to how much mumbling he hears under the breath of Double-Os cursing him from across the world, when things don’t go according to plan. 

Presently, though, he entertains himself by staring at the ceiling and tapping out obscenities in morse code to M, who is sitting across from him and has the sense of humor to appreciate it. It kills the time and wards off an homicidal urges. By the time the meeting breaks up, he’s missed most of its subject matter, but has replayed the events of the morning more times than he cares to admit. 

Bond had still been there when he’d rolled awake to his seven o’clock alarm, and there had been something achingly melancholic in the domesticity of the kiss that Bond had pecked on his lips, before the agent had headed for a shower. Q, now, contemplates if such a kiss is just a hang over from who Bond endeavored to be with Madeleine, or who he was with Vesper. 

007, though, had not stayed for breakfast, and that seemed to suck some of the seriousness out of things. Heading to work, Q had been (and still is) caught between disappointment and relief. 

“I’ve just read the Estonia report,” M says, as they wait to get coffee from the same machine. 

“Disappointed?” Q murmurs, pretending not to notice how Allen from Accounting angles his head towards them, as if creating spreadsheets on the third floor isn’t exciting enough for him. 

“Yes, but not surprised,” sighs Mallory, seeming to give up on the coffee line. He breaks from the queue, and Q follows dutifully as they trot up the stairs. “I’m used to it all going tits up by now.”

“Welcome to MI6, sir.” Q can’t help but smirk. Still, though, he adds, “There _are_ other leads to pursue, or will be. We’ll manage. We always do.”

They reach Mallory’s office, and he pauses at the door to give Q a smile that’s warm, if condescending. “I admire your youthful optimism.”

And Q snorts, because he’s not sure anyone’s ever described him as “optimistic” before.

 

 

At noon, he finds himself at a restaurant in Brixton, James Bond sitting across from him at the two person window table. Q finds himself surprised that it’s not sunny - even though it’s autumn in London, and there’s no reason at all why the sun should be out. Q, digging into a Reuben sandwich, realizes that he’s grown used to absurdity following 007 like a second shadow. 

He watches the rain trace paths down the plate-glass window, chewing languidly. Bond’s loaded gaze flickers to him every few seconds, but their conversation is light - there is nothing about SPECTRE, and certainly nothing about the strange agreement they seem simultaneously to have entered.

Namely, to neither speak of nor contemplate a label for the relationship they seem to have taken up. 

There is a variation of Q that would have a problem with this arrangement - for all that he has a tendency to appear as a disheveled genius, he is, in fact, ruthlessly organized. He detests gray area even as all the Double-O section, and all his interactions with it, seems to dwell entirely in neutral, ambiguous shades. But with Bond, the side of himself that’s so intently binary seems to relax. Black and white seems not only to be less defined, but less important. 

Bond’s hand is resting insouciantly on the worn wood of the table. Q, without any forethought, reaches over and covers the agent’s scarred knuckles with his own. They stare at each other for a few moments, but neither pulls away, and after a bit Q goes back to eating and Bond’s thumb begins to trace circles over his. 

They depart into the damp afternoon by one, debating the relative merits of Estonian pirukad pastries as they slip into their coats. Bond quips something out, and Q laughs, and almost misses the vibrating of his work phone in his front pants pocket. 

“Yes?” Q says crisply, tightening his scarf and exchanging a look with Bond. 

“Sir,” Julian, his second-in-command, begins, equally crisp. “Rajesh and I have just cross referenced the CCTV data from Tallinn against the Belmarsh fire.”

“And there’s something I should see?”

“Precisely.”

“Get M-Branch down there, while you’re at it,” Q orders, picking up the pace as the Tube station comes into view. Bond follows at his heels. 

“Something exciting?” the agent asks, as they canter down the underground stairs. Q doesn’t look, but surely the beginning of a roguish grin is spreading across Bond’s face.

Q smirks. “Always.”

 

 

By the time they make it to Q-Branch, the cavalry has assembled - the administrative dream team, along with Julian, and the only other Double-O not currently in the field. Despite the situation, 009 still manages to give Bond a death glare as he approaches the huddle around Julian’s laptop. 

“What do we have?” Q says, unwinding the scarf from around his neck and tossing it impetuously toward his desk chair. 

“One of the SPECTRE operatives from Tallinn seems to have made her way to London,” Moneypenny says, eyes on the CCTV footage Julian has brought up. Q elbows his way around Tanner to see grainy video of a young woman making her way through Shoreditch, eyes partially obscured by round glasses and hair pushed up beneath a wool hat. She is unremarkable in a way that seems too deliberate for comfort - it’s the same dissonance that seems to surround Bond whenever he’s not swaddled in designer suits and weaponry. An innocence without the proper conviction to back it up. 

“Is this live?” M asks, eyes calculating. 

Julian nods. 

“Then I want her tailed.” M looks to Bond. “Can I trust you?”

Bond’s lips twist like he’s trying very hard not to smirk. “As much as you ever can.”

“SPECTRE knows his face too well,” Eve counters. “She’ll be tipped off immediately.”

M doesn’t miss a beat, and turns to 009 instead. “Barsosio?”

“Yes, sir.” 009 is already shrugging into her coat and turning to Q expectantly for a weapon. 

“Sir, I--” Bond begins. 

“Don’t worry, 007, if this woman leads us to Blofeld, you’ll get your piece,” M condescends. “For now, Subira is a safer bet. You’re not really known for your interrogation skills, Bond.”

“Fair enough,” Bond concedes, and Q snickers. He’s aware that it probably should be less amusing that Bond has a tendency to kill first and ask questions never. 

He equips Barsosio with a Beretta and an earpiece before sending her off, and the breakthrough momentarily sends a wave of joviality through the room. Bond stays in Q-Branch to lurk behind Q’s left shoulder, and for a few moments some of the stagnancy after Blofeld’s escape seems to melt off; finally, there is something to pay attention to. 

Soon enough, he has Subira on CCTV, tracking the SPECTRE woman with a step both predatory and nonchalant. The woman trots through London, stopping to admire a pair of clogs in Topshop Oxford Circus, and to laboriously decide on a pack of cigarettes in a corner store. Either she’s aware that she’s being tailed, or is just genuinely unhurried. Q, uncomfortably, begins to lean toward the former, and he can tell just from the impatient aura behind him that Bond agrees. The afternoon wanes, and nothing is uncovered, but at least the routine of surveillance is comforting. 

Moneypenny returns to the branch in the evening, after Bond has been called off on some urgent HR business that apparently had been put off four missions ago. She pauses next to Q, where he stands monitoring Subira’s progress with one eye and contemplating an Elon Musk interview with the other. 

“I heard you and 007 have been cavorting together recently,” she says smoothly, and though he doesn’t look, he can hear the lascivious smirk on her lips. 

“Who told you that?” 

“Bond himself,” she admits. “Bit of a braggart, that one. As if I couldn’t guess for myself.”

“That gossipy bitch,” Q murmurs, with faux offense. 

Moneypenny cackles. “You two were _so_ inevitable.”

After she’s gone, he’s left to ponder if there’s any truth behind her words. _The inevitability of time_ slithers through his thoughts, but doesn’t dismiss them - though he suspects that timing, indeed, is significant. He can’t help but think of himself as a rebound, an easy solace in the aftermath of whatever happened with Madeleine Swann. Bond is not the man for guarantees, Q realizes, but he does find himself wishing that there was just the slightest bit more of a concrete element in the whole relationship, or whatever it may be. Though he will not claim to be particularly possessive, he is sure that he’s not at all interested in being considered disposable. 

009’s voice crashes through his thoughts. “Q, are you seeing this?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking 1-2 more chapters after this to say what needs to be said. But yeah, thanks for reading this mess of a self-indulgence. :)

Before long, the team is again assembled in Q-Branch, gathered around Q’s laptop. 

009 has her eyes on a block of council flats across the street. Q swivels a nearby CCTV to follow her line of sight to a third floor window. Inside, he can just make out a hanging potted plant, and behind it, partially obscured, is a head of graying hair. 

“That’s him,” Bond says immediately, leaning forward.

“There’s no way you could know that,” Q replies evenly. 

“I would know better than any of you,” Bond retorts. 

“And why the hell would he be in London?” Tanner asks. “He knows better than that.”

“Tell Barsosio to get back here,” M butts in, expression unreadable. 

“Sir--”

M only holds up a hand. “Patience, 007.”

Q watches Bond let out the slightest of exasperated snorts, crossing his arms over his chest. He wants his second chance; it’s obvious he regrets letting Blofeld live, even if it had seemed like the higher road at the time. Q imagines it was more for Madeleine than anything else, but now that she’s mysteriously off the radar, Bond’s back to his usual self. For better or for worse. 

Subira reports back by midnight, and Bond is noticeably antsy. M, finally, is tired enough to acquiesce. 

“You know what to do,” M says, looking as though the lateness of the hour and the bloodlust in Bond’s eyes have him regretting every decision he’s made to arrive in this position. Q equips 007 with the usual mission essentials, along with a sniper rifle, and then turns to stuffing his backpack. He should have no problem directing Bond from the comfort of his own flat, with the cats fed and the light low. He’s not anxious, per se, because he’s seen Bond off too many times to be at all upset by it, regardless of the circumstances. Still, he’s had enough of the Q-Branch fluorescence for the day, and the cats will worry. He has, in fact, left his most comfortable earwig at home, and that seems like a professional enough excuse. He’s brightened to find he has enough seniority to enforce his will, or at least when his superiors are distracted by impending doom.

“I don’t like assassinations,” M says, pointedly, but no one pays him much mind. When there’s no response, he turns to 009. “You’re on security detail for the Quartermaster for this. If anything goes wrong, I want all our high level personnel secure, regardless of where they are.”

“You think SPECTRE has something larger in the works?” Moneypenny asks. 

“I don’t know,” is M’s grim reply, and alarmingly such a statement sums up the last few months at Six rather well. 

Barsosio nods resolutely at M’s orders, but a moment later she throws a shark-like grin over her shoulder at Q, in typical Double-O fashion. Bond, for a second, looks as though he wants to do something sickeningly protective, like tell Subira that if anything happens to Q it’ll be her head. But the moment seems to pass and Bond, thankfully, says nothing. 

Then he’s off, giving Q only the slightest of nods before disappearing down the stairs. Q finishes packing his laptop, and Subira follows him down to street level to hail a cab. Watching London nightlife sweep by, he pretends to ignore 009’s curious gaze. 

“Are you and Bond…?” she asks, finally, as they pull up outside his flat. 

He gives her a carefully neutral looks. “Are Bond and I what?”

Surely, she’s already guessed the full extent of things, but he won’t give her the satisfaction of admission. 

Inside, he makes her a cup of tea before they settle into their respective roles - she secures the sliding door to the balcony, draws all the blinds, and takes up a standing pose by the door, while he grabs a blanket and melts into the settee before Leibniz can take up the whole cushion. 

“I doubt this is really necessary,” Q says, pulling open his laptop and inserting an earwig. “This place is very secure. And if there was any real risk, M would’ve made me stay at the office.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Barsosio teases, then shrugs. “But SPECTRE _has_ had a tendency to dwell in the element of surprise.”

“Do you really think it was him, in that flat?” Q asks, typing rapidly. 

Subira’s lips press tightly together. “It certainly isn’t a place we’d be inclined to look, if it wasn’t for Julian’s sharp eyes.” She chews on a thumbnail and reaches for an old receipt off Q’s kitchen counter. “Do you mind if I have this?”

“Uh, sure?”

She tears it into a perfect square and starts to fold, and after a few moments he realizes she’s making an origami crane. Stress relief, perhaps. Q turns back to the comms. “007, report in.”

“I’m within a block of the target,” Bond says, voice made of steel. There’s an anger there, so rarely displayed - Bond is known for exasperation when met with the impossible, but anger only when he’s been hurt. Q tries not to think too hard about that, or about Blofeld.

He brings up a CCTV feed. “Mmhmm, I see you. Make a left and you should be there.”

“I know, Q,” is the growling response, and Q smirks. 

“No need to get prickly, 007.” Q’s smirk turns a little wicked when he adds, “Your hands will be bloody soon enough.”

From the door, Subira snorts, eyes on creasing the lightly glossed paper beneath her adept fingers. 

“Is he there?” Q asks tentatively, once Bond’s in position.

“I don’t see him,” Bond mutters. “I’m ditching the sniper rifle and going in.”

“Of course you are,” Q replies, with a sigh. He sends Mallory a quick email, relaying Bond’s plan. The resigned response comes back within seconds. _Bugger it._

With a few suspiciously simple keystrokes, Q has unlocked the door into the building’s foyer, and Bond sweeps toward the staircase. Q hears the click of his brogues on the linoleum flooring, the sharp intakes of breath and rustle of a gun being pulled from its holster. He makes the somewhat jarring realization that he’s missed this - the patter of a mission, especially with Bond. He can’t imagine, now, that either of them could ever have lived without it. 

“I’m on the third floor” There are security cameras in the hallways, but once Bond is inside the actual flat, Q will be blind. He turns his attention to escape routes, finding himself a building schematic and running through a few possibilities while Bond jogs down the corridor toward the designated number. At the door, he pauses, weapon drawn. 

“Problem, Bond?” It seems perfectly likely that the flat will be empty, and that this, too, will be another empty lead. That they’ll all remain in this absurd, suspended animation they’ve confined themselves to while SPECTRE skulks around the edges of their minds. Surely, some version of this must be running through Bond’s mind as well. 

“No,” the agent replies stiffly, and Q ponders, detachedly, how it’s true that blunt instruments aren’t meant to think. 

In the next second, Bond’s shoulder smashes through the thin wood door and Q’s ears are filled with the sounds of muted violence. He waits, patiently, as something shatters, and two rounds are fired. Judging by the proximity, they’re from Bond’s gun. There’s a few heavy thuds, and footsteps, and then Bond lets out an uncharacteristic swear. Q feels Subira’s eyes on him as he waits for Bond to finish and report in. 

Finally, there comes a gruff, “Q?”

“Did you kill him?”

“I killed a bloody decoy,” Bond replies, seething. There comes the distinct sound of a body being searched, pockets turned out and patted, and then the slide of a dragging corpse. 

“Fucking hell,” Q snaps. “What’s the fucking point of all this? Why bother to lead us--”

He’s cut off by three heavy knocks on his door, and then all of Subira’s muscles seem to tense instantly. She straightens, hand on her weapon, and all Q manages is to breathe out a quiet, “ _Oh._ ”

“You jinxed it,” Barsosio murmurs, voice dangerously even. 

“Q?” Bond asks, footsteps halting on the other end of the line. Q doesn’t reply. 

“Get to the back door,” Subira orders, and Q wastes no time in reaching for the Walther strapped to the underside of the couch and leaping to his feet, laptop jammed beneath one armpit. Leibniz follows on his heels as he sprints crookedly for the back staircase to the basement, but by the time he makes it he can hear footsteps coming up the spiral stairs on the other side of the door. 

“Shit,” he says, feeling panic begin to tighten around his airways. He forces out a breath, reminds himself of his own training, and of the Double-Os who do this every other day. It’s all still possible. It always has been for Bond.

He retraces his steps raggedly, and just as he’s locking himself into the bathroom with shaking hands, both doors to the outside world slam open. There comes the sound of gunshots, but only handguns - no automatic weapons that he can hear. Leibniz has made it in with him, so together they huddle in the bathtub, Q’s knuckles turning white around the grip on his gun. There’s another snub nose under the sink, but he doesn’t dare retrieve it on the idea that his footsteps will give him away, if he’s not already compromised anyway. He wonders if Newton has had the good sense to find his way into a closet or under a bed. Bond’s voice is still in his ear, asking, with increasing volume, what the _bloody hell_ is going on, but Q can hardly hear him over his own heartbeat. 

Abruptly, he hears the chaos cease. 

There’s a long moment where he waits for Subira’s voice to call out for him. When he’s met only with muted footsteps, he realizes it’s not going to come. He straightens, slowly, pulling the laptop out from under his armpit and ten inch folding knife from the compartment in the sole of his shoe. Leibniz lets out a questioning mewl, but Q silences him with a surprisingly effective look and sets to work destroying the hard drive, his breathing carefully regulated with each swipe of the knife. He blocks out Bond in his ear, and the shuffling on the other side of the door - he’s on his own, now, and he needs to be entirely present. There’s no point in telling Bond what the agent has already guessed; Q’s in deep shit. 

He’s rising, with agonizing sluggishness, out of the bathtub when he hears the tentative knock on the bathroom door. The urge to whisper Subira’s name is almost overpowering, but he knows better. Crossing to the sink on silent feet, he leaves the mutilated laptop beneath the faucet and finds the handgun stashed under the cabinet. The knife drops onto the counter. 

There’s no sound from the other side of the door. It’s not her.

He takes a long breath, and stations himself beside the handle to gather his nerve, finger on the Walther’s trigger. He’s felt a fear like this before, when he’d been slammed to the ground by the force of the explosion that totalled old HQ. And then again as he’d been sprayed with broken glass and tossed like a ragdoll in the backseat of a car while trying to hack Nine Eyes. This, though, is different. 

He’s alone. 

Or, rather, not quite. He can hear the breathing of whoever’s on the other side of the door, syncing up with his own. It sends him over the edge; in one smooth motion, he’s slamming open the door and pulling the trigger and trying not to close his eyes when the sound rings out through his flat. He’d guessed there to be four intruders, originally, but Subira seems to have taken out the first two, though she’s nowhere to be seen. He shoots the third between the eyes and doesn’t think, which turns out to be a problem - the fourth appears out of his peripheral vision before he can think to react and sends the butt of a pistol smashing into his cheekbone. He stumbles, and nearly loses his grip on his gun, but by the time he can get his eyes off the spinning floor his assailant is already on him. A quick, painful armbar, and Q’s watches his own weapon clatter to the ground. He breaks out of the hold and stumbles backwards into the bathroom again, on instinct. It’s not a good choice; he realizes this just as his attacker reaches for the long knife Q’s left next to the sink, and time slows uncomfortably. 

It speeds up again when the blade penetrates between his second and third rib. 

It’s like all the air is sucked out of the room. He meets eyes with the man holding the knife for the barest of seconds, just before he twists the handle and Q lets out a shriek so loud he deafens his own ears. Then the blade is gone and he’s lying on the cold floor tiles, eyes on a blurry ceiling. Something hot and stifling settles over his chest, and begins to spread, but he can’t feel anything but fear. 

The stranger stands above him for a moment, face obscured by a black mask. He’s wearing gloves, but Q is sure that there’s the bulk of a familiar ring on the middle finger of his left hand. The knife is discarded into the bathtub, barely missing Leibniz, who lets out an indignant yowl. The SPECTRE operative pauses for a moment, as if considering whether Leibniz is enough of a high priority target, but seems to decide against it. He turns swiftly on his heel, then, and leaves Q to his own gasping breaths. 

Finally, the voice in his ear comes into focus. He’s not sure how long Bond’s been talking, or what he’s been saying, but Q breaks in with a wheeze. Leibniz sniffs his hair, perplexed. 

“Bond,” he gasps, fingers twitching in a pool of blood. “Hurry.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading guys! It was fun to get back into 00Q for a little while. Maybe I'll go at something a little more thought out in the future, but for now enjoy an ending to this mess of a post-SPECTRE wank. I left it a tiny bit open-ended, so we'll see :)

Time passes, but in a less than linear fashion. The second hand on his watch seems to stop, periodically, and he’ll be caught in a stagnant node until time rushes forward again. He’s not sure whether it’s been hours or seconds when he perceives rapid footfalls approaching. Leibniz has curled up beside his head, his cold nose pressed into Q’s collarbone. Q thinks it might be some primitive form of comfort. He’s generally considered Newton to be the perceptive one, but he’s nowhere to be seen. 

And he’s steadily been losing feeling in every part of his body that’s not the throbbing hole in his torso; he can’t tell if his short, gasping breaths are from shock or a punctured lung. Scientific clarity still attempts to permeate, even through the haze of pain and fear. 

When a pair of blue eyes appears over him, it feels unreal.

Bond moves faster than Q’s cloudy gaze can comprehend. Rather suddenly, the agent is kneeling at his side, stripping off his jacket, and then Q is crying out unexpectedly from where Bond applies fabric and pressure to his wound. For a moment, all he sees is red - across the white tiles, trickling between his flaccid hands, leaking behind his eyelids.

“Back-up is on its way,” the agent says gruffly, once Q can hear him over the blood rushing in his ears. “Just hold on, Q.”

“Stay,” Q says, with very little thought, and clasps a weak hand around Bond’s left cufflink. 

“Of course.”

Q has to take a few shuddering breaths before he speaks again. “Subira?”

“She’s fine.” It’s a lie, but since it’s from 007, it’s a fairly convincing one. Q appreciates the effort. 

“Have you seen Newton?” he wheezes. He has the sneaking suspicion that there’s blood in his mouth, but his tongue feels too uselessly lethargic to investigate such a thing. His eyelids flicker. 

“Q,” Bond hisses, and the Quartermaster snaps back into consciousness. They meet eyes for a moment, and there’s relief there, before Bond says quietly, “I didn’t see him. He’s probably hidden deep, I imagine.”

“Maybe behind the stove,” Q replies, but he’s not sure it comes out as anything more than an incoherent mumble. His eyes dart downwards, on a whim, and he notices for the first time that Bond has his large, scarred hand wrapped around Q’s bloodstained one. He finds a momentary solace in this; just enough to lull him into darkness, Bond’s straining voice in his ear. 

 

 

It’s a role reversal.

For once, it’s Bond beside a bed in Medical, with a few days of stubble and a rumpled collar. Q makes note of the fact that most of Bond’s love affairs probably never make it to this point, not with death as ever present as it seems to be. 

Q is not dead. What a novelty. 

He is, however, in a fair amount of pain, so he chooses to show signs of life mostly in an attempt to coerce more morphine out of the nurse across the hall. Bond’s look of palpable relief is just a bonus. 

“Don’t be so melodramatic, 007,” Q manages, before slipping into another drug induced half-sleep. “I’m perfectly...fine….”

 

 

The drugs make him dream, or maybe he’d do that anyway. Regardless, the nightmares come, one by one, but he doesn’t wake up when each one finishes. They roll through him like previews before a movie. 

It starts off in his bathroom, where he reclines languidly in a tub full of blood. He’s not sure whose it is, but he is alarmingly undisturbed by it. Eventually, though, it begins to rise, past his neck and chin, until he can’t breathe and all there is is red, inside and out. He has the sensation of falling, briefly, and the next scene unfolds in Q-Branch, where the lights are out and a leaden silence has settled over the empty desks and hallways and shooting ranges. He floats into his office, and finds Bond seated in the swivel chair behind his desk, looking perfectly unconcerned. He points a nonchalant finger back out the door, but when Q looks the way he indicates the terrain has changed again, and he’s watching Madeleine Swann die in a number of grotesque ways. He can hardly remember her face, but he screams until his throat feels raw and he wakes up sweating. 

Though Q is lying on his side, he’s still aware of Bond’s presence behind him, draped over one of Medical’s plastic chairs. The room is silent, save for his own ragged breaths. 

“Bond,” Q rasps, finally. “What happened to Dr. Swann?”

There’s a long, loaded pause. 

“She left.”

Q waits. Maybe it’s cruel, but he wants the words from Bond’s mouth himself. He wants to be different; the ache in his side is making him feel far too much like just another stop in the cycle. Another node in time before Bond returns to what he does best, and inevitably alone. He doesn’t want Bond’s kiss to be a death sentence.

“She talked about Helsinki,” Bond relinquishes. “I got a postcard last week from Rovaniemi.”

He can’t quite discern why thinking of Madeleine, safe and independent in Finland, is such a comfort, but he doesn’t question it. Instead, he turns over, with a groan, to face Bond’s impenetrable stare. “Thank you for saving my life,” he says, because it seems like the thing to do. 

“I didn’t do much.” Bond’s face softens, and he adjusts his shoulder holster to lean towards Q, who hums in response. The agent looks like absolute shite, and Q doubts he looks much better, but there’s something beautifully quiet in the moment before M arrives and breaks the spell. 

“Quartermaster,” he greets, though Q doubts it’s as formal as he intends. Mallory gives him an almost fatherly once-over and then adds, “It’s nice to see you with more of your blood inside than out.”

Q smirks. “I would agree.”

M doesn’t sit, and in the pause that follows, his expression folds into a familiar frown. “We have some things to go over.”

“Where’s 009?” Q asks immediately, trusting that the time for palliatives has passed. 

To their credit, the look exchanged between Bond and M is about as subtle as it gets. Still, it’s infuriating. Q’s jaw clenches, and Mallory knows better than to keep him waiting any longer. 

“Subira was shot twice in the chest. However, much like 007, she has a resurrection habit.” M presses his lips together. “She’ll recover.”

Something about the silence that follows has Q asking, “And?”

“There is _some_ question of how exactly SPECTRE was able to find and infiltrate your flat.”

“Subira wouldn’t--”

M holds up a hand. “I’m not inclined to believe such an allegation either. And I know you have a particular allegiance to the Double-O section. But for security’s sake, you realize…”

“She will be questioned,” 007 adds, darkly. He’s angry - maybe it’s that protective streak bobbing its way to the surface. Q can’t decide if it bothers him or not. 

“Regardless, it’s my fault. I didn’t identify the risk where there was one,” M admits, and there’s a very rigid kind of regret in his eyes, if not quite guilt. 

“I made the same assessment you did,” Q replies. “There was no empirical evidence that SPECTRE would have reason to go after me.”

“That is the question, isn’t it? Why go after you? And why leave you alive?” M’s gaze drifts to the tiny basement window. “If their intent was to kill you, they would’ve done it.”

Q doesn’t miss Bond’s wince at the words. 

No one says it, but the answer hangs in the air - they’ve all been too caught up in their 007-induced shock to take SPECTRE seriously, before now. No one seemed able to accept the fact that despite Blofeld’s capture, the danger still existed - and even when he escaped, the post-crisis haze still obfuscated any kind of rational response. Now, though, some semblance of clarity seems to have returned. Bond is back, Q is alive, and they can mobilize again. 

Whether they have any hope against SPECTRE is another matter entirely.

Moneypenny arrives, with a quiet smile and hideously funereal bouquet of white roses. Bond sends her a look, but Q just cackles right along with her. It reminds him, oddly, of that day in Q-Branch; 009’s birthday. Subira’s birthday. A cake-pop and Moneypenny’s laugh and the blatant absurdity of it all. 

 

 

Once the various organs nicked by the knife look as though they’re healing nicely, they let Q out of the dismal confines of Medical, on the promise that he won’t do anything strenuous enough to split his stitches. He tells Dr. Molony what he wants to hear, and then excuses himself shamelessly to do whatever the hell he pleases. 

He doesn’t take any further leave, and instead heads straight to Q-Branch. There’s no pain, as long as he can rope a minion into doing all his heavy lifting and bending over. It practically feels like a vacation, to be able to focus only on what’s within an arm’s reach. When there’s not a minion in range of assistance, he’s got an overqualified, hovering Double-O to do his dirty work for him. It’s a microcosm of their entire working relationship, if he’s honest. 

M indulges Bond’s status as errand boy for a few days, until he gets impatient and assigns the agent to a recon in Tübingen. It’s only peripherally SPECTRE-related, and it goes smoothly, smooth as the voice in Bond’s ear. 

When he arrives back in Q-Branch, eight days later, Q is stretched out on the settee in his office, sleeping fitfully. He’s got a hand laid protectively over the bandage on his side, as if still trying to slow the flow of blood. Bond, instinctively, checks his pulse, and then lifts his hand gently to eyeball the wound itself - his shirt is still a pristine, untarnished white, and his breathing perfectly even. Nothing to sneeze about. 

Q stirs beneath his touch, and shows no surprise when he cracks his eyes to find Bond kneeling beside him. There’s a moment where all they do is look at each other, the agent’s hand still resting over Q’s. Bond looks as though he is still somewhat baffled as to how he manages to have a moment like this with anybody, much less Q. He says nothing. 

“I need a smoke,” Q mumbles, eventually, seeming hesitant to actually move. 

“The roof?” Bond offers, and that rouses Q enough to get him off the couch, albeit with a few winces and groans. Bond volunteers a hand, which Q ignores in favor of searching his pockets for a pack of Spirits. 

“You know--” Bond starts, but Q cuts him off with a rueful smirk.

“Don’t say it,” he sighs. 

“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” Bond retorts lightly, matching Q’s limping pace up the back staircase. 

“You were going to say some clever derivative of ‘cigarettes are bad for you,’ which is such an unoriginal and, in light of the recent circumstances, _ironic_ observation that I couldn’t let you go through with it,” Q rants, flicking his lighter. “You know what else is bad for you? Stab wounds. Working a hundred hours a week. Being employed by the bloody Circus.”

_Or being at all involved with a Double-O,_ Bond thinks. He waits until they reach the roof, and Q is blowing smoke at the gray blanket of a sky, before Bond says quietly, “I was going to say your shoe is untied.”

Q just grins. “Oh, fuck you.”

With a groan, he slings a leg up onto the two foot safety barrier and, with one eye on the traffic beneath, tightens the laces in question. Afterwards, he seems exhausted by the efforts, and takes a heavy seat with his back against the barrier. Bond opts to stay standing, maintaining his hawk-like perch, with eyes on the London skyline. Q clasps his wounded side, more of a nervous habit than an attempt to quell the pain, and breathes smoke. 

“What’s to be done, Bond?” Q asks, after a long while. He looks up at the agent, expectantly, but Bond doesn’t meet his eyes. 

“We take down SPECTRE and whoever else is in the way.”

“In the way of what?”

Bond doesn’t reply. It occurs to Q that he’s not sure he has an answer, either - that the evidence increasingly seems to indicate that all of this meaningless. Has been and will continue to be. Q takes a page out of Bond’s book and decides not to be bothered. If he can grow accustomed to such large and regular doses of absurdity, overall insignificance hardly feels like a leap.

“You _can_ call me James, you realize.”

Q scoffs. “I’m not doing that.”

“Never?”

Q just laughs and sets into his next cigarette. “So you’re just going to keep running missions forever? Taking down whoever is ‘in the way’?”

“Retirement didn’t suit me.”

“But how long can this all last?” Q motions, somewhat frantically, around and between them. “This reality is fluid, as we’ve seen, and--”

“Does it matter?” Finally, Bond meets the gaze staring up at him. The blue of his eyes is made even more fluorescent by their contrast against the gunmetal of the sky. 

It gives Q pause. “Perhaps not,” he stumbles, turning his eyes on the ground. He feels more than sees Bond slip down beside him, pressing their shoulders together. The agent reaches out a few fingers to push a curl out of Q’s face, but Q impedes him before the hand reaches his cheekbone, deciding it to be too much of a cliché. However, he has no problem hijacking the maneuver by linking their fingers together. A moment later, he lets their hands drop, intertwined, into his lap. Though it seems likely that the future doesn’t matter, he feels, for a second, as if he has some idea of their place in it. 

They will be happy, perhaps. And, if they are, it will be an absurd happiness.

Q is not worried.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
